Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Fingerprinted for lunch.

Nice to meet you everybody, the name's Jess! I come from a small West Midlands Village in England and I'm in year 10 (I think that means grade 9 in the USA). I think my high school is considered small compare to others, we have about 120 students in each year and we have years 7-11. My canteen doesn't have set meals like VEG, we have are fingerprints taken at the beginning of the year, and using these machines around the school we put money on our accounts so when we queue up to choose our food all we need to do is swipe our fingerprints near the till. My canteen doesn't have much of a variety unfortunately, there's typically sandwiches, pizzas, burgers and chips available each day but no super healthy options; the rest of the food is cake and chocolate bars so I bring in pack lunches. I am over the moon to be considered for a guest blogger, I love trying new recipes and different foods, and I love to try and be healthy as well.

For lunch today had thick wholemeal granary bread with lettuce ham and Marmite on it; an apple and some grapes; a Fredo, a apple Caprisun (can you tell I like apples) and a little cup of veg (tomatoes, radish and sweet pepper). I also went to costa coffee after school and indulged in a soy milk cappuccino, yum! I'm not lactose intolerant or anything, I just like the soy milk taste.

That is a very healthy lunch Jess. Even with the Frddo! A little treat now and then is never a bad thing. You have enough veg and fruit in your lunch to make up for it. And you have a good variety of foods, even with all the appley bits! Thank you for sharing your lunch with us today. :)

Hi, that's a lot of fruit and veg in your lunch, that's great! I'm trying to figure out what a freddo is? I'm in the US, we do not have them here (at least where I am in GA). I see Dairy Milk on the wrapper, so I'm guessing chocolate?

Hello it's Jess here :) Freddos are these little Cadbury chocolate bars, they're just normal milk chocolate, if you ever get a chance you should have one they're delicious! And hehe I guess a little young for coffee but they're scrumptious!

If she's in year 10 then that's 14/15 years old, so not too young for coffee! And freddos are mini chocolate bars in the shape of frogs! Jess, where abouts in the West Midlands are you from, I'm from Leamington Spa :) x

I'm in a little village in between Tamworth and Birmingham, it's good because we have the luxury of the quiet countryside but we're easily connected to the motorways and main roads so we can go to town anytime :)x

Ahh not too far from me :) I'm near to Henley in Arden and relatively close to Stratford - I'm right out in the sticks though, bit of a mission to get into town but it does mean it's amazingly quiet here and there's no light pollution at night :) Quite a small world really isn't it? x

Ah! a fellow west midlander! :D When you wrote 'west midlands village' and the finger scanners, i was gong "eh this sounds like my old high school!"(I'm now a first year commuting student)Nice lunch ( and that freddo. Freddos are the best :) ) I've never had lettuce and marmite before. Might try that for one of my lunches at uni! (when you get to uni, expermentation is slightly risky but good for mixing up your day. But you have ages yet. Plus costa is good on the odd occasion. I find having it in a takeaway cup tastes better)

Jess, do you pack your own lunches? Or does someone else pack for you? How much say do you have in what is packed -- I mean, do you get to ask for specific items or ingredients? Also, how long do you have for your lunchtime?

Well I go food shopping with my mum and we both pick out the things we like, trying to keep it as healthy as we can but with a few little treats of course ;)and I usually pack my lunch since I'm now 14 and enjoy to make up all my sandwiches. I get 20 minutes break and three quarters of an hour lunch :)

The mom in me is just a tiny bit concerned about the cappuccino because of the amount of caffeine in it that late in the day. But one cappuccino is still a lot better than a lot of kids who drink several sodas (a lot of which also contain a lot of caffeine) in a day, so..... If that's your worst I wouldn't be too concerned about it.

But the reason I'm writing this is really to ask you how you feel about those pre-packaged apple slices and grapes?

I tried a package of those apple slices once (I live in the US) and I found they had a very pronounced metalic taste. (I took one bite, spat it out, and threw away the rest of the package.) Since you had both those as well as a fresh apple, how did you think the taste of the two differed, or did you really notice a difference?

When you consider that a freshly cut apple starts to turn brown quite soon, and even when you rub the cut side with a lemon that still only keeps them from turning brown for a day or so, the fact that those packaged apple slices don't turn brown for weeks makes me really wonder what they're treated with.

So, truth to tell, I'd have much preferred if you'd packed two apples, and then perhaps another little cup of grapes.

(And then maybe a bit of milk to drink instead of more apple stuff. *smile*)

But kuddos to you for getting your crunch from veggies and fruits, and not from empty stuff like crisps. And good on you for being as nutritionally savvy as you are at your age, and realizing that the lunches provided at your school are quite lacking.

I agree with you about the prepacked apple slices in the USA tasting weird. I treated myself to a Happy Meal recently and was served prepackaged apple slices for the first time. They tasted as you say - metallic - and I didn't finish the entire package. I only eat fast food once every two or three months these days, so those apples really made me sad.

I got mine from the local supermarket, they taste like normal apples because these were in the fresh fruit and vegetable section, the bags only last a few days so you can't buy them in big quantities, only individually. They are preserved using natural ingredients, and I find them lovely, honestly you wouldn't know the difference :)

Sounds like an insidious way to get you kids' fingerprints on file. Just another invasion of privacy and a way to permit Big Brother to keep an eye on you guys. Once taken, those fingerprints will probably end up in many systems. Refuse to allow it, parents! Otherwise, this will come back to haunt you in the future!